Signal Engine Rules

SignalFloor records signal outcomes using a deterministic lifecycle engine. Every pending activation, stop-loss hit, take-profit hit, and expiry follows the same rules for every provider — there is no manual override, no discretionary re-labeling, and no retroactive edits after a candle closes. This page documents the rules providers need to understand before publishing signals to followers.

The engine evaluates one OHLC candle at a time from the market-data feed. It does not reconstruct tick-by-tick path inside a bar. When a wide candle could have hit both protective and profit levels, we apply an explicit conflict policy rather than guessing which level printed first.

Unguarded signals (no stop-loss)

Providers may publish signals without a stop-loss. These are labeled Unguarded on every card and detail view. The engine will not auto-close them at a protective level — only take-profit hits, manual provider close, or expiry apply. Followers must acknowledge the disclosure before viewing unguarded signal details.

Take-profit levels

Signals may define up to three take-profit targets (TP1, TP2, TP3). On each candle the engine checks from the farthest target inward (TP3, then TP2, then TP1). The first level whose price is touched by the candle high (longs) or low (shorts) closes the signal at that target. Partial scaling is not modeled — the engine records one terminal outcome per signal.

Pending activation & order types

Limit, stop, and stop-limit orders activate when the candle range crosses the entry (and stop price, when applicable). Market orders activate on the first valid candle after publish subject to entry guards: if price has already moved more than 15% away from entry within five minutes of the signal anchor, the engine marks the entry invalid rather than filling at an unrelated price. See provider tier formula for how closed outcomes feed tier assignment.

Stale & expired pending signals

Pending signals that never activate are marked stale after four bar periods of their declared timeframe, then auto-expired after six bar periods. Stale signals remain visible with a warning badge; expired signals close with result expired and do not count as wins or losses in provider stats.

Changes to these rules

Lifecycle logic lives in the shared signal engine module mirrored between the marketing app and Supabase edge functions. Any change to conflict resolution or activation thresholds requires a versioned deploy and will be announced on the blog before it affects live signals. The conflict mode identifier above is the contract providers can grep in their signal audit logs.